President Joe Biden’s plan to put two progressive antitrust scholars in top positions signals an aggressive approach to combating corporate consolidation and monopoly power, especially that wielded by technology giants such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc.
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Nearly two months into a new Congress and a month and a half into a new presidential administration, there is not much to show for it yet. Other than a handful of cabinet nominees being confirmed, another impeachment of the previous president that failed to result in a Senate conviction and congressional committee assignments being set, nothing of substance has been accomplished.
The $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package continues to struggle for traction. The promised $2,000 per person stimulus checks have been scaled back to $1,400 and are still nowhere in sight. The traditional February address by a new president outlining his priorities to a joint session of Congress has yet to be scheduled with the month already having come and gone. Despite Democrats controlling all the levers of power in Washington, gridlock persists due to their razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate as well as the moderate/liberal divide within the party.
Feb 23, 2021 3:10 PM PT
In a recent Linux Foundation blog post titled Preventing Supply Chain Attacks like SolarWinds, the foundation s Director of Open Source Supply Chain Security, David A. Wheeler, adamantly pushed the need for software developers to embrace the LF s security recommendations to prevent even worse assaults on government and corporate data security in the wake of the rampant data breach.
Wheeler s post is timely and filled with information to make it harder for hackers to exploit the future systems we all depend on. He includes 11 Linux Foundation recommendations including how organizations can harden their build environments against attackers, the need to begin shifting towards implementing and then requiring verified reproducible builds, and the practice of changing tools and interfaces so unintentional vulnerabilities are less likely.
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Is privacy really worth saving?
Firmin Debrabander
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Is privacy overrated?
The question might seem daft, given how gravely privacy is endangered in our digital age. Spies in government and the private sector routinely devour data for insights into our behavior, insights that may be used to manipulate our behavior. And privacy’s advocates contend that freedom and democracy are unthinkable without it. As philosopher Michael Lynch puts it, privacy affords us control over our thoughts and feelings, which is a “necessary condition for being in a position to make autonomous decisions, for our ability to determine who and what we are as persons.”